


Perchance to Dream

by 1863



Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Character Bleed, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 00:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15231795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1863/pseuds/1863
Summary: Richard starts to lose himself, but someone keeps pulling him back.





	Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a night terrors prompt on the Hobbit kinkmeme.
> 
> Fair warning, this is a little strange.

Between the idea  
And the reality  
Between the motion  
And the act  
Falls the Shadow

_For Thine is the kingdom_

**

 _Palimpsest_ , Richard thinks, watching as Graham’s face gets buried beneath layer upon layer of makeup and latex and hair. Buried alive, but his eyes are open and his expression is calm.

 **pa** **•limp•sest** _(noun)_

  1. writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
  2. something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface



_We are actors. We are palimpsests_.

Made and unmade, created and destroyed, written and unwritten. Killed and reborn. Over and over and over, ad infinitum. 

Scraped clean and used again. 

( _and again and again and again and ag_ —)

“Your turn,” Graham says.

His eyes are still open and they’re clear and blue, blue like something unfathomably cold, or else terrifyingly hot. Strange, how one colour could be two things at once, and opposites at that. _Blue ice_ , Richard thinks. _Blue flames_.

“Richard?” 

Tami hovers near his chair, a makeup sponge in one hand.

“Are you ready?” Graham asks.

He’s watching Richard in the mirror but it’s Dwalin’s face he’s wearing, and seeing Graham twice-removed—reflected in the glass and hidden behind a mask—makes Richard a little dizzy.

“Yes,” he hears himself say. Tami moves closer and starts dabbing something cool and sticky onto his face. 

He’s not telling the truth, not really, and when he looks up and sees that Graham is still watching him, Richard knows that Graham can hear his lies, too.

** 

He dreams in black and white, of a universe leached of all colour and filled with people who look like faded photocopies of a life half-remembered. Greyscale, pixelated, grainy.

He dreams in garish technicolour, in hues too bright and vivid to be entirely real. Bleeding reds and scorching yellows and blues so deep they make him feel like he’s drowning. Colours that throb and scream for attention, that press against his skin and eyes and pulsate like living things.

He thinks they might be nightmares.

They’re not. 

Richard remembers every dream when he wakes up, alone and gasping in an empty house that doesn’t quite feel like home just yet. Sometimes he wakes to darkness, to a night that closes in around him, smothering and moonless and black. Sometimes he wakes to the sun streaming in through the windows, yellow and piercing and harsh, forcing him to squint as it burns tired eyes still unwilling to face the day.

He doesn’t know which he prefers. The shadows are full of menace, but they soften the corners and sharp edges of the world too. And the light—the light reveals the true form of things, ordinary and mundane—but it still inevitably stings. 

One day, Richard wakes up just before dawn. He recalls a dream of endless corridors, of passages hewn into rock and dug into mountains, caverns so deep that walls were lost to darkness no matter how many torches were lit. The sense of claustrophobia is overwhelming and he scrambles to find the lamp, nearly knocking it over in his haste to turn it on.

It gives him a weak circle of sickly yellow light. Richard sees his hands shaking at the edge of it, half in shadow and half out, and feels an inexplicable stab of fear.

He thinks of Graham.

He thinks it’s a crush.

It’s not.

**

There are shadows on Graham’s skin. 

Richard watches them move as the clouds drift slowly across the sky, bending the light and making the dark shapes on Graham’s face dance. 

One moment he’s a villain, a veil across his eyes and shrouding one side of his face; the next he’s a hero, a pale gold halo circling his head. And then he’s a king, crowned in alternating rays of sunlight and shade; and now he’s a man, just a man—despite the costume and padding and prosthetics—standing in a studio parking lot and holding a fake axe.

 _I am,_  Richard thinks, _I am derailed._  

“You seem tired,” Graham says, not looking at him.

_I am undone._

“A little,” Richard replies, staring at Graham’s fingers curled tightly around the handle.

“Not sleeping well?”

Graham turns to face him. The sun is at his back, blazing, no buildings or trees to soften its impact, and it throws the edges of his face into stark relief. He could be carved from stone. Or flames.

_I am unmade._

“Dreaming,” Richard answers vaguely. Graham’s grip on the axe changes, letting the handle slip through his fist until only the very end stays snug in his palm. It swings back and forth in a slow arc and Richard’s throat contracts.

“Nightmares,” Graham says.

It’s not a question.

Richard lifts his gaze from the guillotine swing and meets Graham’s eyes. They’re not cold today, nor hot. The sun washes them out, bleaches them some pale insubstantial shade that Richard doesn’t recognise. Fading, Richard thinks, like some forgotten photograph left to wither outside, the edges curling, the image slowly, steadily disappearing. Memories, physically manifest; memories, physically destroyed. The idea disturbs him.

“I suppose,” he says. His voice is thin. 

Graham lets the axe fall. The tip hits the ground with a dull thud but Graham keeps it upright with a single finger against the end of the handle, pressing the axe into the asphalt beneath their feet.

The breeze picks up and pushes the clouds along again, and again the shadows on Graham’s face shift.

He smiles, lips moving and teeth glinting, white and sharp and his eyes are blue, Richard remembers, they’re blue just like his own. Graham’s smile widens the longer Richard keeps staring. He feels his face heat up and it’s not from the sun on his skin, it’s not that at all: he’s warmed from within, burning really, and as if on cue the clouds disappear entirely.

If there are still shadows on Graham’s face, Richard can’t see them anymore.

All he can see is light.

(It’s a signal, it’s a message, it’s a warning.)

Richard keeps staring, right into Graham’s eyes, right into the sun, and thinks: _he doesn’t look like a man anymore_.

**

Between the conception  
And the creation  
Between the emotion  
And the response  
Falls the Shadow

_Life is very long_

**

It’s the difference between bending and breaking, between folding and collapsing.

Richard lets his characters marinate in his head, lets their thoughts and mannerisms and patterns of speech soak in, slowly, bit by bit. They fill all his empty spaces, from tiny fissures to huge gaping holes, and Richard tells himself it’s enough. You learn to make do with what you have and Richard has always been a good student.

And if it leaves him bereft at the end of the day, well. He’s learned to live with that, too.

 _Lucas_ , he thinks to himself, _Guy_. Harry and Ricky and Percy and Phillip; Lee and Alec and Heinz. And John, multiple Johns: Thornton, Porter, Standring, Bateman. Sometimes Richard looks in the mirror and wonders if that’s how other people seem him, if he looks like a _John_ : basic and bland; standard, forgettable.

It’s a comfort, of a kind.

Richard dreams of quaint English villages, of bleak English seas. He dreams of an industrial wasteland blanketed in white, cotton fluttering in the air like snow. There are churches with bells that clang like alarms but sound like joy, and tiny underwater graves with coffins shaped like submarines. There are featureless deserts, shimmering in a haze of heat; there are smells of bone-dry sand and old sweat.

Sometimes Richard will wake with his heart racing and thoughts running fractured and frantic through his head: _recoil brace for impact go go go,_ a phantom ache throbbing in his shoulder and adrenaline coursing through his veins.

He can turn it off—he’s taught himself how to turn it off—but sometimes it’s easier to leave it be.

**

He watches Graham talking to Adam but he’s looking through Thorin’s eyes. He sees his men, his friends, his kin. Something sparks along his spine, a recognition of something that feels alien here. The fur around his shoulders is heavy and warm and when Graham turns and meets his eyes the warmth spreads, tendrils of heat unfurling and wrapping all around him.

“Are you coming?" 

Graham’s voice comes out of Dwalin’s mouth but both their eyes are blue. It’s disorienting. Thorin’s eyes narrow and Richard’s heart skips a beat; he’s both, he’s neither, he’s here and he’s not.

“Always,” he says, and fights the urge to laugh. Something like hysteria bubbles in his chest.

Graham raises an eyebrow and his eyes brighten with sudden amusement.

“I didn’t mean it as double entendre,” he says, and this is Graham now, Richard is sure of it, it has to be. Dwalin would never be so coy.

“Shame,” Richard says, surprising them both. He feels like a thief, stealing a measure of Thorin’s courage to further his own ends. 

 _Or maybe it isn’t his courage_ , he muses, as he watches Graham’s eyes widen a little _._ Richard feels his lips curving, his gaze turning sharp, and something close to triumph widens his smile as Graham licks his lips.

_Maybe it’s his madness._

**

This is a memory:

Graham nursing two fingers of scotch, lips kissing the rim of a glass, amber liquid catching the light. They’re in a pub, more of a bar really, a place for people who are much younger and prettier and colder than Richard can ever remember being. Music plays too loudly, bass notes slamming into his body in waves like an external heartbeat.

Richard finished his drink a while ago but his throat still moves as he watches Graham swallow. He feels the phantom burn of alcohol in his chest, tastes the smoke and peat and spice of a good single malt on his tongue.

 _This is how Graham would taste_ , Richard thinks, _at this exact moment_. This is how he would feel: burning.

Richard’s mouth waters and sweat beads along his hairline.

“Want another?” Graham asks, nodding to his empty glass.

Richard shakes his head.

“This is enough,” he says, and imagines that the lie tastes like Graham too.

**

Between the desire  
And the spasm  
Between the potency  
And the existence  
Between the essence  
And the descent  
Falls the Shadow

_For Thine is the kingdom_

**

This is a dream:

The music shifts around him like light behind closed eyelids, patterns in endless variations even though the beat is steady, the rhythm unchanging for three or four or five minutes.

Richard can feel the vibrations against his skin. Fingers of sound, he thinks absently, trailing a hand over his chest. It’s autumn, almost winter, and his touch is cold. He shivers. He’s listening to something old, to songs from a time when the world was different and his very existence was nothing more than a vague possibility. The thought calms him, somehow 

Voices of people dead and buried sing to him through the speaker box. Richard listens to music made by hands that have lain still, utterly still, for decades, to lyrics penned by poets who have long since succumbed to silence. 

The doorbell rings.

He gets up to answer it and isn’t surprised to see Graham there. The streetlights frame his face in an artificial glow and a freezing blast of air seems to announce his arrival.

“Am I disturbing you?”

Richard starts to laugh.

“Always,” he replies. “And never.”

Then Graham is leaning closer and Richard mirrors the action, helplessly, like he’s a puppet, like he’s a shadow, forever doomed to follow a path he has no control over. But it’s Graham who stops short, who hesitates and looks up, eyes searching Richard’s face. And it’s Richard who closes the distance, who opens his mouth but closes his eyes, and then Graham is the one who is following, mouth chasing his and trying desperately to catch up.

Richard feels it like he’s moving underwater, a dreamy slow motion that’s as graceful as it is disturbing. When to breathe, he thinks as their lips meet again and again, as their tongues twine around each other and heat pools in his belly.

_When can I breathe, is it possible to breathe, how can we breathe when we’re underwater?_

“How am I burning all over when you’re barely touching me?”

“Maybe it’s you,” Graham says, his whisper like a brand against Richard’s skin. “Maybe you’re the source, maybe you’re the flame, maybe you’re the one that’s destroying _me_.”

“It’s not destruction,” Richard lies, hands moving, seeking bare skin. “Maybe you’re a phoenix. Maybe, maybe—”

Graham’s tongue finds the pulse point on his neck and Richard’s words dissolve, lost to a gasp that turns into a plea when Graham’s thigh slides between his legs.

“It’s a little death,” Graham assures him, and Richard opens his mouth—to agree or to protest, he doesn’t know—but then Graham starts moving his leg and Richard’s thoughts unravel, collapsing into a formless pile of moans and wordless requests for more, more, _more_.

All he knows is the weight of Graham’s body pressing him into the wall, the heat of his skin, the spikes of pleasure that shoot through him as their mouths and hands and thighs move against each other in so perfect a synchrony, it’s like they’ve been doing this for years.

Then Graham’s lips find his again, Graham’s tongue pushes in, and Richard doesn’t know whose hunger he can taste anymore, doesn’t know whose heartbeat he can hear. He can’t breathe but he can’t stop, he doesn’t _want_ to stop even when the cost might be his own—

Richard gasps, fighting for air, and when he wakes up it feels like he’s drowning.

**

_This is the way the world ends  
This is the way the world ends _

**

“They’re getting worried about you,” Graham says.

 _They_ , Richard thinks. _They_ are worried.

Graham’s voice is careful and his eyes are watchful over the rim of a paper cup. It’s an actor’s voice. A spy’s eyes. Both are trained to lie.

The cup is lidless and Richard can smell its contents, a bitter-burnt aroma. He can almost taste it too, hot and smooth and rich against his tongue.  

His mouth starts to water.

 _Coffee_ , Richard thinks. _I’m thirsty for coffee._

Graham takes another sip. His throat moves, Adam’s apple bobbing, up and down, up and down. His tongue darts out, traces the curve of his lower lip, leaves a slick damp trail across his mouth like an oily fingerprint.

His mouth would be warm right now, Richard thinks, liquid-warm and coffee-bitter; he’d taste like something worth waiting for. Not sweet, not easy, something it took practice to get right. A flavour so full it would flood his whole mouth, flow over his teeth and bloom against his tongue, clog up his throat and choke him from the inside out.

It’s a little death, he remembers someone saying to him. Lied to him, really, because surely—surely every death counts. Surely even the little ones add up, bit by bit, flaking off the seconds and stripping away the minutes. Everything has a price and some things cost more than others.

Nothing lasts forever.

“Still having bad dreams?” Graham asks. He’s still watching, he’s always watching. His eyes are so blue.

“They’re not all bad,” Richard says. His mouth is so dry that it hurts to answer, brittle words scraping over his sandpaper throat. Something gets stuck, lodged somewhere near his breastbone, and Richard is vaguely aware that his chest hurts, too.

He’s thirsty, that’s all.

“What happens in them?”

Graham is staring and Richard fights the urge to cough. Who knows what might come out of his mouth?

“I drown,” he replies.

 _You drown me_ , he doesn’t add.

“I drown,” he repeats, “but it’s okay.”

Graham’s arm extends, reaching out, fingers seeking something Richard isn’t sure he wants Graham to find. His hand hovers, suspended in the air like a promise, a warning, a partial benediction. 

 _Touch me_ , Richard thinks. _Name your price._

Graham’s hand lands on his wrist. His fingers spread, then settle and squeeze, and Richard doesn’t know if they’re holding him steady or holding him under.

“How is that okay?”

Richard opens his mouth. No sound comes out. He clears his throat. It stings.

_Name your price._

Graham pushes the paper cup towards him.

“Go on,” he says. “Take it.”

Richard presses his lips against the cup, against the very same spot that pressed against Graham’s lips just a moment ago. He licks along the rim and opens his mouth again, head tilting back, and swallows. 

He drinks and drinks and drinks. He finishes the coffee.

“How is it okay to dream of drowning every night?” Graham asks, again.

“It’s just a little death.”

Graham’s eyebrows shoot up. Richard smiles but his throat is still dry, so dry his voice seems to splinter, tissue paper-weak, cracking like over-baked clay. Graham could rip right through him with a whisper but he doesn’t say a word.

Richard isn’t grateful. His chest still aches.

He stares at Graham’s mouth.

He’s still so thirsty. 

**

 _This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but with a_ —

**

Thorin’s thoughts are comfortingly linear, as clear and defined as the geometric patterns that adorn all of his people’s things—buildings, armour, weapons, jewels. He dips his fingers into a pile of coins, one of thousands gleaming in the torchlight, and wonders why envy and greed were associated with the colour green when it’s obvious that it should be gold.

Pure, perfect gold.

 _I am dreaming_ , Richard thinks, _this is a dream._ The quality of light is alien here; it doesn’t belong on any earth he knows. His hands are not his own, his voice is not his own, his face has been deformed with padding and paint and hair. And yet—

And yet.

“You cannot see what you have become,” someone says. Their voice is mournful, resigned. Richard feels the sharp stab of Thorin’s annoyance like a thousand needles piercing his skin, pricking just deep enough to draw blood. The wounds are superficial but he’s a king, he’s _the_ king, and no one has the right to speak to him this way. Not even someone he—

Thorin forcibly leaves the thought unfinished and Richard resists the urge to laugh.

“By the pricking of my thumbs,” he says, voice dripping with derision, “something wicked this way comes.”

There’s a sudden silence.

“Richard?”

And this is a new voice, a different one altogether. An impossible voice. It tears through his dream like a sword through flesh and rips the whole world in two.

Thorin starts seeing things, flashes of sudden and disorienting images—strange machinery and bright lights, people dressed in odd clothing and staring at him with looks of concern—and then there’s a whole other universe bleeding in through the cracks, rushing in and pushing him aside. Darkness creeps in at the edges of his vision and the last thing he sees before the shadows swallow him completely is an imposter wearing Dwalin’s shocked and frightened face.

**

Is it like this  
In death’s other kingdom  
Waking alone  
At the hour when we are  
Trembling with tenderness  
Lips that would kiss  
Form prayers to broken stone.

**

He’s in a desert, strapped to a cross, the sun burning his skin. He licks his lips, feels them scrape chapped and painful against his dry, dry tongue and he thinks that he would do anything, anything for a drop of water. Kill or maim, lie or betray—it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t _matter_ , he just needs one drop of sweet, sweet water and then he’ll be okay. He can think things through and they’ll all forgive him, all of them, he’s sure of it, they’ll forgive him no matter what he does to get it. Find a way out, find a way through, and then he can just run and run and run and—

—he’s underwater, trapped and sinking down, down, down. Panic rushes through him with every heartbeat, every breath; his hands shake even as he whispers _es ist ein Ehre, so zu sterben._ But there are so many ways to die, so many, and he can’t help but wonder why he always seems to choose the worst ways to go. He hears glass cracking, a sharp thin sound that stabs through his skull like nails being hammered into a coffin. Water rushes in, cocooning him in a cold and terrible embrace, rushing relentlessly into his mouth and nose and eyes and he’s sure his lungs are going to burst when the—

—sun warms his face, and he’s holding out a flower, beautiful and rare. Someone gifts him with a smile that’s equally lovely and equally precious and without meaning to he reaches out, fingers brushing soft, warm skin.

“Margaret,” he whispers, and then—

—another hand is holding his, squeezing his fingers as they walk down a quiet country lane. Something bubbles gently in his chest and he thinks it might be happiness, or even, absurdly, love. Then a church bell tolls in the distance, getting louder and louder and louder until it fills his entire consciousness, until it’s only thing left in the entire world and Richard puts his head in his hands, the country lane and the vicar he loved forgotten, obliterated by the endlessly ringing bells—

“Richard.”

There’s movement at the corner of his eye but he can’t make it out in the darkness. Something soft touches his temple; it could be hand, it could be a brush of lips, but it absolutely couldn’t be the fulfillment of a wish too deeply buried. _This can’t be happening_ , he thinks. It can’t be happening. It can’t.

“No,” Richard says, voice barely a whisper, and tries to push the touch away. “ _No_ —”

Fingers curl around his wrist, warm and strong and inescapably gentle. Richard feels his pulse beating hard against the grip and stares blankly as those fingers slide down over the top of his hand. Then they slip—carefully, slowly, _deliberately_ —between his own fingers and settle there, and Richard thinks: we are holding hands _._ I am in bed and we’re holding hands. 

He lifts his head.

Graham’s face is lit only by the faint glow of a dim lamp, but Richard sees nothing of Dwalin there, nothing at all. His jaw is beardless, his head is bare, and when he speaks his voice has no trace of accent.

“Richard,” he says again.

His other hand reaches out, hovering in the space between them.

Richard closes his eyes but there’s one else with him now, no Johns or Harrys, no dwarves or spies. He’s alone. Utterly alone. Richard, just Richard, with no one to hide behind and no way to retreat. He has no choice; the only face he can wear is his own and he knows that what he wants is laid wholly bare now for Graham to see. Shame burns his skin but he can do nothing to defend himself. Nothing.

 _Please_ , he thinks. He tries to speak, tries and fails. _Please, please, please._

Graham’s hand lands softly on his face, brushing his cheek, trailing down his neck. Richard’s breath hitches. Graham’s hand is shaking.

“Richard?”

He opens his eyes.

“Yes.”

It’s the truest thing he can possibly say. He watches Graham absorb the word, as though he’s turning it over and over in his mind, considering. It isn’t fair, Richard knows, to expect Graham to understand something he’s barely able to articulate himself.

“I...” he adds, and stops.

Graham searches his face. Richard wonders what he sees there, beyond the bloodshot eyes and dark circles, beyond the masks he’s worn almost every day of his life. It can’t possibly be anything good. But Graham doesn’t look away, just watches him like he’s waiting, waiting for Richard to finish, waiting for Richard to give him a sign.

“I got a bit lost,” Richard says, eventually.

And Graham smiles, just a little.

“But you found your way back.”

His palm is heavy against Richard’s chest.

“I had an anchor,” Richard says, words escaping from hidden places with no thought, no censor. 

But Graham’s smile widens, and his eyes light with warmth, and his fingers tighten around Richard’s hand.

“You could have said something,” Graham says. His voice is impossibly soft, so gentle that Richard has to shut his eyes against it, unable to face such tenderness without a filter.

“No,” he hears himself say. “I couldn’t.”

“But, Richard,” Graham says, voice still so ruinously quiet, “you just did.”

The bed shifts and a moment later, Richard is pulled back, so carefully, against a warm, solid chest, and wrapped up in strong, secure arms.

“Rest, Richard,” Graham whispers, voice even softer now as he breathes the words against the back of Richard’s neck. “Just rest.”

Richard can’t help it, has no way of resisting this at all. He lets himself melt into the solid warmth at his back, the arms around him tightening in response, and Richard doesn’t even need to ask if Graham will still be there when he wakes up, the hands pressing against his stomach as good a promise as any.

Sleep claims him gently. If Richard dreams, he doesn’t remember it.

**Author's Note:**

> The lines of poetry are from TS Eliot's _The Hollow Men_. 
> 
> The title and Richard's/Thorin's line about pricking thumbs are, of course, from _Hamlet_.


End file.
